Launching Greening the Blue

A large aspect of Greening the Blue is about staff engagement and it is therefore important to highlight all the excellent work that’s going on across the UN to improve our sustainability performance. In order to achieve a sustainable UN, we must engage our colleagues in greener office-related behaviours, and to talk to leaders about how they can help.

Below are some suggestions for ways you can help to promote Greening the Blue. Have a look and see if there are any that would work for you and your organization…

1.Email to staff

Talk to your communications team about sending out an email to all staff to introduce Greening the Blue. Ideally the email would come from a senior person in the organization, and include information about work that’s been going on in your organization. You can find a draft email on our Staff Engagement Toolkit page to help you get started, as well as attractive wallpapers for everyone to have on their computers.

2.Put up posters

Use our ready-made posters to raise awareness of Greening the Blue. You can edit them in Microsoft Word, and personalise them to your organization – using photos, quotes and statistics appropriate to you. You can then print them off on your standard printer, A3, and stick them around the office. As always, remember to print responsibly.

3.Organize a staff meeting or brown-bag lunch

You could invite your staff to a meeting or sustainable lunch, introduce them to the website and update them on work that’s happening to green your organization and how they can help. You can use the ready-written powerpoint presentation, which you can edit for your purposes.

4.Have a party!

Or a breakfast! Or a coffee morning! Organize something fun to show your colleagues that going green can be fun.

5.Set up a page on your website

Talk to your communications team about putting a page on your website about your sustainability performance, perhaps with a link to Greening the Blue. You can also add Greening the Blue buttons to your website by clicking here.

6.Set up a page on your intranet

Whilst talking to your communications team, why not suggest that they set up a page on your intranet about your organizations sustainability performance? Draft text for a news story to be sent out via your intranet/website have also been made available via the Staff Engagement Toolkit page.

7.Set up a green group

If your organization doesn’t have one, why not set up a green group to help introduce changes around the office?

8. Get a page in your annual report

Talk to your communications team about having a page in your annual report about your sustainability performance. For an example, see the DPKO annual report.

9. Introduce a green project

Why not find a current stream of work and see if it can be used to showcase your organization’s commitment to sustainability? Measure the carbon footprint of delivering a service. See if you can reduce it. Talk to your programme officers about other things you could do which would be innovative and a good story.

10.Get your leaders involved

Find a senior manager to champion your work – the more senior, the better. Present them with a list of options for engaging and supporting your greening efforts personally. This might be giving a talk at a staff meeting, including some information about greening efforts in their general communications or launching a green award for staff.

11. Competitions!!

Why not launch a green competition for staff? Have a brainstorm with your green group to identify an appropriate subject area and process.

12. Start a green notice board

If you don’t already have one, why not set up a green notice-board in a prominent place? You could display information about your organization’s green performance, with information and stories about staff who’ve gone the extra mile.

13. Green canteen

What do you and your colleagues do for lunch? Why not see if you can organize a sustainable lunch – low on meat, high on locally sourced produce. Get your caterers involved and see if local suppliers would be interested in helping out.